How to Keep Your Move Stress Free

A move is often an immensely stressful time, with a million things to do, the constant fear in the back of your mind that you’re going to forget something important, and no clear way of making sense of all the stuff you’re discovering packed away in different nooks and crannies.

But does it have to be that way? What if there were a few straightforward tips that could help to remove the stress from your moving experience?

Remove everything from hiding

One of the main sources of stress during a move is all those belongings that you’ve half-forgotten about, littering the place and hiding in unexpected corners. It’s these “miscellaneous things” that cause confusion, mental strain, and general anxiety about what to do with them.

Begin by taking as many of these “hidden items” as possible out of hiding, and putting them out in the open. To begin with, you could do a lot worse than piling them all on your living room floor.

Everything that’s already organised and sorted where it should be — like clothes in the wardrobe, for example, can wait.

Use the opportunity to get rid of excess stuff

The next step in the process is to filter through your “re-discovered” item piles, and ask yourself a couple of simple mental questions about each object; “does it make me happy?” and “is it useful to me?”

Anything which scores a “no” on both of those measures, or which you’re just not “feeling”, should be put aside for disposal.

“Disposal” should happen as soon as possible — at this stage you’re trying to reduce the clutter and keep only the gems, not the dirt. Arrange to give things away to friends, drop them off at a charity shop, or if needs be, take them down to the dump.

Once you’ve filtered through your assorted piles of “stuff” in this way, apply the same mental exercise to your already-organised belongings. Get rid of any clothes, utensils, or trinkets which fail the test.

At the end of this exercise you should be left only with things that you have a positive emotional feeling towards and / or get great use out of.

Arrange all belongings by type

When arranging your belongings into boxes, you want to “batch” as much as possible. Essentially this means that you’ll focus on packing one “category” of items at once — such as clothes, or cutlery.

You’ll save yourself immense stress and irritation down the line by being super-specific with your categories when packing. If a box says “stuff for my room” on it, you’re being too vague. If it says “my shoes”, you’re right on the mark.

Hire a professional moving company

If organising the move itself wasn’t enough to get you stressed, then trying to ferry things from one location to another in your own car, over multiple trips, might do the trick.

One of the best ways of taking the stress out of a move is simply to hire a professional removal company — whether it be a local man with a van or an interstate removalist — to transport your property across in one fell swoop, while you focus on more important things. Like putting your feet up for a breather.